Tag Archives: Documentary Hypothesis

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible

What Are the Main Problems with the Documentary Hypothesis?

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Proponents of the various versions of the Documentary Hypothesis believe there must be 4 or more authors of the Pentateuch for several reasons, but the three most common are:

  1. Some texts in Genesis refer to God as Yahweh, whereas others call him Elohim. A single author would not use two different names for God.
  2. The books of the Pentateuch contain duplicate stories and repetitions. A single author would not repeat himself in this manner, thus multiple authors must be behind the text.
  3. The language and style of the Pentateuchal documents vary. There are genealogies, censuses, narratives, and legislation. A single author would not use so many writing styles.

How do critics of the Documentary Hypothesis respond?

  1. The names of Yahweh and Elohim are often used contextually because they represent different aspects of God. Yahweh is the covenant name of God, which emphasizes his special relationship to Israel. Elohim speaks of God’s universal rule over all the earth. In addition, it was very common in the ancient near east for writers to use multiple names for a single god.
  2. Duane Garrett explains, “The use of doublets and repetition as evidence for multiple documents in Genesis is perhaps of all the arguments the most persuasive for the modern student, while in fact being the most spurious and abused piece of evidence. . . . The assumption appears reasonable, but it is altogether a fallacy. It is an entirely modern reading of the text and ignores ancient rhetorical concepts. In an ancient text, there is no stronger indication that only a single document is present than parallel accounts. Doublets, that is, two separate stories that closely parallel one another, are the very stuff of ancient narrative. They are what the discriminating audience sought in a story.” Again, we know from other ancient near east documents that parallelism and repetition was an important part of the story-telling process, so a single author would frequently make use of this device.
  3. A single author may change literary styles within a single document. He may have different purposes for different portions of the document. Matt Slick reminds us, “A technical work is different from a narrative or historical piece.  The Pentateuch has components of all of these. Therefore, different styles are expected.”
Books of the Bible

What Is the Documentary Hypothesis?

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While Jews and Christians have traditionally believed that Moses was the primary author of the Pentateuch, some biblical scholars today reject that belief.  Instead, these scholars believe that the Pentateuch was written over several centuries by several different authors and not finally compiled into its final form until just a few hundred years before Jesus was born.

Daniel I. Block, in the Apologetics Study Bible, provides more detail. Block writes that biblical scholars in the mid-nineteenth century began to question the traditional authorship of Moses.

The questioning began early with doubts whether Moses recorded his own death and burial (Dt 34), knew of a place in northern Israel called Dan (Gn 14: 14; cp. Jos 19: 47; Jdg 18: 28-29), or referred to the conquest of Canaan as having occurred in the past (Dt 2: 12). Thus scholars developed an alternative explanation for the origin of the Pentateuch known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

According to the classical form of the theory, the Pentateuch is the product of a long and complex literary evolution, specifically incorporating at least four major literary strands composed independently over several centuries and not combined in the present form until the time of Ezra (fifth century B.C.). These sources are identified as J, E, D, and P.

J represents a ninth century B.C. (c. 850) document that originated in Judah, distinguished by its preference for the name Yahweh (Jehovah, hence the “J”). The E source preferred the divine title Elohim, and theoretically was composed in Israel in the eighth century B.C. The D stands for Deuteronomy, supposedly written around 621 B.C. to lend support to Josiah’s reforms. The priestly document, P, supposedly was composed c. 500 B.C. by priests seeking to preserve their own version of Israel’s history.

According to the theory, these sources were compiled and combined in the middle of the fifth century B.C. Nehemiah 8 recounts the moment when Ezra publicly read the Pentateuch as a unit for the first time. . . .

Variations of the Documentary Hypothesis prevailed for more than a century. However, due to advances in literary studies, today the state of pentateuchal scholarship is confused, with new theories or radical modifications appearing often.

There are significant problems with the Documentary Hypothesis and its off-shoots, as noted by many conservative scholars. Those will be addressed in a subsequent post. For now, it is important to know that this basic theory of the composition of the Pentateuch is still very influential among many biblical scholars.